The Aubrac Transhumance: Driving the Cattle Up in May

Required Activities

• Be in the village of Aubrac itself, at 1,310 m, on the weekend nearest 25 May, and stand where the road narrows as the decorated herds come up off the lower ground — 20,000 people turn out for it — then stay for the blessing of the herds that opens the estive

• Get close enough to one Aubrac cow to check her off against the breed standard: a fawn coat, a black muzzle and black eyelashes ringed with white so the eye looks made up, white horns with black tips turning up in a twist, a black tail tuft and black-edged ears. Then look at her feet — hard black hooves and straight legs are why this breed, and not a heavier one, can walk up to 1,500 m and back down

• Walk the old road over the top — the via Podiensis, in use across this plateau since at least the 11th century — either the 8 km of open estive pasture from Nasbinals at 1,180 m to Aubrac, or the drop from Aubrac down the enclosed valley of the Boralde to Saint-Chély-d'Aubrac at 800 m, which is the same 500 m the cattle climb

• Walk out to a buron on the pastures — stone walls under a lauze roof — and find its three rooms: the loft where the buronniers slept over the hay, the ground-floor room where the curd was pressed into tome, and the cellar where the fourmes were left to ripen. In 1850 there were 300 of these on the Aubrac, holding 1,200 men and turning out 700 tonnes of cheese between 25 May and 13 October; the last two working ones shut on 13 October 2002

• Find the three surviving buildings of the old domerie at Aubrac — the church of Notre-Dame-des-Pauvres, the tour des Anglais thrown up in the 14th century, and part of the hospital itself — and in the church tower the cloche des perdus, the bell of the lost, rung to steer pilgrims across the plateau in bad weather; it spent some years down in the church at Saint-Chély-d'Aubrac before it was brought back up